


An Old Familiar Scene

by Orevet



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 20:37:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5799130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orevet/pseuds/Orevet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This isn't the first time Poe's met Kylo Ren. Or the second.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Old Familiar Scene

When Poe Dameron is ten years old, still reeling from the death of his mother, Senator Organa ( _the_ Senator Organa) invites him and his father to visit for a week’s vacation. 

“They have a son around your age,” his father tells him. “so you’ll have someone to play with.” 

They’ve barely set down their luggage when the senator (he still can’t believe he’s really here, in her house) takes Poe’s hand, gently insisting that he call her ‘Leia’ as she ushers him into the playroom. 

“He’s a bit shy,” she says as she opens the door. A boy with dark hair and darker eyes glances up at them from the half-built toy X-wing in his hands. Leia crouches down to her son’s level. 

“Ben,” she says, “this is Poe. Is it okay if he plays with some of your toys?”

Ben pauses, glances at Poe again, then nods emphatically. Leia ruffles his hair before giving Poe a comforting pat on the shoulder as she leaves the room. 

He plops down across from Ben and watches him carefully pore over a set of assembly instructions. Poe’s not used to this much quiet at home (even now, with mom gone, he tries not to think) so after a minute or so he clears his throat. 

“So who talks first,” he asks, “do you or I talk first? How’s this work?” 

Ben looks up, startled. He tilts his head a bit in confusion. Then he sees the kindly grin on Poe’s face, and lets out a soft huff of a laugh. The rest of the week passes quickly for them once the tension’s been broken. 

Poe and Ben don’t ever become best friends, exactly, but whenever their families visit each other, it’s easy for them to fall back into rhythm as playmates. 

When Poe Dameron is seventeen, Senator Organa (he’ll never get used to calling her Leia) asks him and his father if they can take some supplies to the Jedi Academy. 

“Han would normally do it” she says, “but he’s been…well. Anyway, it’s been nearly four years since Ben shipped off, and I’m sure he’d love to see you.” 

Once they arrive, Poe hurries to help unload the crates of rations and bacta before running off to find Ben. He finds him in a tucked-away courtyard, hacking away at a training dummy. 

Ben’s shot up in the four years since he’s last seen him, all limbs and ears and freckles. He decides to let him finish his practice, and leans back against a nearby tree to watch. Poe’s had a decade of flight-training himself, and knows how disorienting it can be to be yanked out of a concentration zone. 

After a half hour or so, with the training dummy reduced to shreds, Ben lowers the stick he’s been using as a lightsaber. For a few moments he simply stands there with his back to Poe, narrow shoulders rising and falling as his breathing returns to normal. 

“Impressed yet?” he asks, back still turned. 

Poe’s not sure how to respond, exactly. There’s something odd about his voice, a hint of aloofness that wasn’t there the last time they spoke. Ben finally turns, his training stick tossed off to the side with an almost practiced carelessness. 

He tilts his head to the side. “I suppose my father couldn’t be bothered to make the delivery,” he says, eyes flinty. 

His eyes have no business being that cold, Poe thinks, and Ben makes a face like he’s tasted something sour. 

“You can tell my mother I’m doing fine,” he says. “That’s why she asked you to come along, isn’t it?” He laughs then, and it’s a harsh, sharp bark of a thing that makes the hair on the back of Poe’s neck prick up. Ben waves his hand in dismissal and strides past him, exiting the courtyard. 

Poe wants to believe that he and Ben are just growing apart, becoming different people, even though deep in his gut he knows there must be more to it. But when Leia comms him a few days later to ask how the trip went, all he can say is that Ben’s training seems to be going well. 

One year, five months, and eighteen days later, the massacre at the Jedi Academy occurs. It’s not until Poe overhears a teary-eyed comm call between Leia and his father that he finds out Ben was the main perpetrator, rather than one of the victims. 

He doesn’t sleep for weeks afterward, wondering if he could have prevented all this if he’d just spoken up.

When Poe Dameron is thirty-two, he receives a mission to retrieve some intel from an old man on Jakku. General Organa (he’d just gotten used to calling her Leia) gives him the mission herself. 

It’s no secret in the Resistance that the general’s son is with the First Order. Hell, she staved off the grief of losing him (and her husband, and her brother) by forming the Resistance in the first place. Exact details of Ben’s involvement are more closely guarded, though, and Poe doesn’t pry. His respect for General Organa extends to the secrets she keeps.

Things go well enough on Jakku until the intel’s in his hand. His X-wing is quickly rendered useless by enemy blasters, but Poe manages to hand off the data stick to his droid and ensure her escape. He gets a perfect shot at the thing in black (Kylo Ren, he reminds himself, it’s a person, only a man) and takes it. 

The second he pulls the trigger, the thing (person) in black whips around and the bolt _freezes_ in the air. It hangs there, thrumming, as Poe’s body seizes up mid-run.

It continues to hover as he’s dragged out into the open. The stormtroopers shove him down before the black figure, and Poe’s taken aback when he crouches down to his eye-level and simply… looks at him. Then the figure tilts his head a bit to the side. And it all clicks into place. 

The words are out of Poe’s mouth before he can stop himself.

“So who talks first?” he asks, “do you or I talk first? How’s this work?” 

When Poe eventually makes it back to the Resistance base on D’Qar, General Organa comes to debrief him personally. He answers her questions in too-terse sentences and can’t quite meet her eyes.

And she knows.


End file.
